In Ashes They Shall Reap
by HaloHunter89
Summary: The slash and rip of the knife through skin and bone, the arterial spray of blood it's all he knows. It's all he's felt anymore. He's lost the count of how many he's been through.


**Written for a friend. I know it took me a bit to post this and for that I'm sorry. It's a new character and I'm still a bit o.O about posting. Hopefully I didn't mess this up so bad.**

 **The setting is Dean in hell.**

There were in things in life that most people never knew were there. There were things out there that went bump in the night and then there were the things that done more. Swallowing around the thickness of his tongue as the lashing of pain seared his back he closed his eyes. This wasn't the things people had nightmares about- it was more.

The pain was something that would follow you into death. All of them. It was never ending and it eventually became a comfort. When it stopped there was that creeping absence that was washed in the fear of the unknown. What was next? What would you be forced to endure? Who would do it to you? Because everything he'd feared and forced away in his life now taunts him in death. He's been beaten, abused, and used and still he struggles. He's a Winchester and they didn't break easy but he knew he done. He could read between the lines. He didn't regret how he got here because Sammy was alive, it counted for something.

"Dean Dean Dean." The voice is cooing and mocking. "Time we meet the monster I helped create."

He snorts a laugh because there isn't anything else to do. The heat is hot enough he can smell his shirt as it nears burning. It's that time of day again or was it night. He wasn't sure but it was almost time for the hounds to make their rounds.

He cringes at the tinge of fatherly undertones and looks to the ground. It's ashen and scorched. It has the hue of burnt coal that is just losing it's red hot glow. It's enough to illuminate the ground and with that he sees dried and flaking blood. He doesn't question what else is there because he's sure the decades of pain he's had here has only added to it. It has long since lost it's ache and burden of pain. He has become dulled to this part of hell but it'll scorch soon enough. Just when you think that it's starting to ebb it roars to life again burning you from the ground up as you are forced to labor under the weight of hells rule.

It would break you in the most simple of ways. It crawled inside your mind. To know you was to hate you and he hated himself. There is a certain self loathing that has reared it's head. He's heard it all.

 _"You're a puppet on a string" "You always do what he told you too." "Look where it's got you!"_

Dean refused to bow and for that he was skewered and left to die slowly over and over again. Still he found salvation in memories. They'd done him good so far but even those were starting to burn away.

"How can _you_ believe in someone who doesn't believe in you, Dean?" Alastair questions his accent dipping into threatening and mocking all in one go.

They'd been here before. John Winchester. The name causes a visceral reaction and he feels fire lick up his back burning him. Burning away what remains of his humanity.

He'd been counting bodies like sheep since he got here. The next one slides into place and he can hear the pained moan coming from her mouth before he even looks up. They've tried to break him for days. Has it been days? It feels like years. Beyond years- it's like decades that he's been here and he's acclimated.

The real hell is when you realize that everything you fought out there counts for nothing here. It counts for nothing because he's just as bad as all those bastards he'd put down. The knife is pressed into his hand, the grip warm and wet. He can smell the iron tang of blood in the air and his adrenaline is already going.

"Thiss is ourr heaven." The voice next to him pressing his truth in on him. "You stop fighting me and you come off the racks. You won't feel the sting of the whip, the bite of the blade, the burn of our eternal fire."

The hand on his back is supposed to be comforting but it's cut him to pieces more times than he could count. It's ripped flesh from bone and let the hounds have at him. It'd been the only thing he's known for so long that he doesn't even flinch.

Raising his eyes he meets Alastair's. He has a smug satisfaction. He'd be safe from pain, truth, and choice because he doesn't have the liberty of such things here. It's hell. Grip tightening on the knife he turns his eyes to the woman on the rack. She's chained down the links glowing and burning into her skin as the rack warms up over the fires that are surely scorching her. His heart is beating to the rhythm of his own war drum.

Bela Talbot. He'd left her for hellhounds to claim and she'd been here longer than him. How many times had she been through this? Her eyes are a searing world of pain that even he knows that he's been granted reprieve from. He can see the fire in her eyes, not her own fire that he could almost recall from a world before this place, but a fire of hell. The fire of pain and the burden of it never ending. Tears roll over her cheeks as she sees who is to torture her. Alastair's breath is like fire on his neck telling him that he does this, he accepts what he is, allows this to be his role and he won't be forced to feel it all over again.

And he will. Because if there is one thing that Dean Winchester is, it's a damn good soldier. He'd been raised to be one from a young age. He'd fought in blood and crafted his world on the destruction of others. This was no different. Just a different man barking orders.

He can still feel the way his bones charred and burned slowly. The way he felt every nerve and piece of tissue burn. He can feel every time they took him apart and flayed him alive. He can feel it all and he feels it grow and expand in his chest till it only a cavern of pain. It's all he knows anymore.

"Dean." her voice breaks.

He watches as Alastair walks around a table next to the rack showcasing more knives and torture tools than he wanted to count.

"Pick your poison." Alastair shows his teeth in what is supposed to be a smile. It's more of bearing his teeth and showing his bloody maw. "We both know this is it."

Walking over he stares down at everything but he's fond of this knife. It reminds him of the one Sammy carried. The thought makes the cavern in his chest expand further and like that he turns to her. Approval radiates from Alastair and it's the first time he's really felt that in his life. He's doing something right.

Her screams are piercing but he drowns them out. It's easier to this when he doesn't think about what or who he's doing it. It's all hunting in the end only this time they're served to him. Blood sluices down his body like a macabre display hiding who he use to be for who he is now. And that's it isn't it? This is who he is now because apart of him likes it. He likes it and that...that is worse than if he'd been on the rack. He knows he's a monster.

"Welcome to Hell." Alastair laughs his voice taunting and tortuous.

The slash and rip of the knife through skin and bone, the arterial spray of blood it's all he knows. It's all he's felt anymore. He's lost the count of how many he's been through. Still his salvation was a burning ember at the back of his mind but he'd long since stopped trying to remember Sammy's eyes. Even in his mind he can't meet them. He's a monster now.


End file.
